


cold skin

by veidtous



Series: Color Theory [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Depression, M/M, loving yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 14:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4023442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veidtous/pseuds/veidtous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re seventeen days from your eighteenth birthday and André has brought you to some house party in the next town over. </p><p>The house smells like bottom shelf vodka and a willingness to be someone else for a couple of hours. You take the cup that André shoves at you – it’s red and crinkled at the bottom with your name scribbled down in black permanent marker. What’s in it, you ask. Just drink it, André replies.</p><p>So you do. You trust your bright eyed friend and disappear into the throngs of youth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cold skin

You’re trying not to tell him you love him,  
and you’re trying to choke down the feeling,  
and you’re trembling,  
but he reaches over and he touches you,  
like a prayer for which no words exist,  
and you feel your heart taking root in your body,  
like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for.

\- _Richard Siken_

 

 

You’re seventeen days from your eighteenth birthday and André has brought you to some house party in the next town over.

The house smells like bottom shelf vodka and a willingness to be someone else for a couple of hours. You take the cup that André shoves at you – it’s red and crinkled at the bottom with your name scribbled down in black permanent marker. _What’s in it_ , you ask. _Just drink it_ , André replies.

So you do. You trust your bright eyed friend and disappear into the throngs of youth.

There are people dancing around you with their arms above their heads, clutching onto their plastic reds and blues hoping none of their drinks spill onto their partners or the floor. A glass breaks off to your right in the direction of the kitchen and laughter ensues. To your left there’s a person crying on the sofa with two other people holding onto their shoulders. You don’t go over and ask what happened.

Instead you follow the muddy footprints out to the backdoor that is clattering slightly from the May winds. You bring the cup to your lips as you exit the house, the white rim of the plastic covering half of your line of sight as you stumble down the cement steps that are still slippery from the rain the night before.

Its quiet outside – the party behind you is muffled and every so often you catch a couple words that are being shouted. One moment you hear the word ‘fun’, and the next you hear ‘bullshit’. The two seem synonymous now.

There’s a pool slightly off center from the door that’s still banging against its frame behind you with what looks to be a person sitting on the edge. Their cup is blue and on its side, empty. You think of the people dancing and you think of the person crying on the sofa, you hadn’t gone to speak to them. You didn’t want to interact with them, yet here you were walking one foot in front of the other towards some silhouette in their solitude.

You don’t say anything when you sit down next to them; you merely gulp the last your drink before throwing it into the pool. They don’t look at you, you don’t look at them.

You like the sound of the breeze whistling through the treetops – you like the smell of the pool water and whatever perfume the person next to you is wearing.

An hour goes by.

Another hour goes by.

André yells out from the clattering screen door that it’s time to go and you look at the person beside you finally. They have round cheeks and far off eyes, their brows are shapely and their skin is darker than yours, but only slightly. You still don’t say anything.

 _Thanks_ , they say as you get up and go back in the house.

 _You’re welcome_ , you don’t say back.

 

 

You’re eighteen years old and you’re standing on the edge of a local bridge. Your sneakers scuff the metal edge and you watch the stones that had collected in the holes of your shoes fall into the wine dark water below. Your sister had asked you how you were feeling. You told her you weren’t sure.

She asked if you were happy and you said sure.

You aren’t sure if you remember what pure happiness feels like anymore.

Everything seems like an echo, everything a muted version of something you’ve already felt. You’ve been happy, you’ve been sad, you’ve been angry, and you’ve been excited. You’ve been hurt, you’ve been melancholy, you’ve been terrified, and you’ve been lost. You’ve been everything and back and you aren’t sure if there’s anything left to feel.

You look at the water again and kick another rock off the bridge.

A moment passes – the wind is blowing around you again, something wicked now and blonde strands fall in front of your eyes giving the otherwise bleak world some color. But it feels temporary.

You push the hair back against your head and take a deep breath. You hold it in for a couple seconds before you scream.

You expect to hear the echo of your scream, some kind of cruel mimic to your earlier sentiments to your sister, but instead you hear someone yelp and you whip around quickly.

It’s the person with rounded cheeks and far off eyes.

They don’t say anything and without thinking much you go over and ask them if they’re okay. They said that they’re fine, that you just startled them and again you find yourself looking over their face. It looks happier now – there’s pink at the top of their cheeks and a light in their eyes that you hadn’t been able to see those how many nights ago.

They ask what you’re doing out here and you just shrug and say killing time instead of being inside. You drop a hint that it’s your birthday and they put a hand on your shoulder and ask if you want to go get something to eat with them, their treat.

You feel warm.

You agree, but only if they tell you their name.

 _Mario_ , they say.

 _Marco_ , you say back.

 

 

You’re nineteen and sitting in a counselor’s office. The walls are cream colored with white molding and the carpet is a pastel looking red. You’re focusing on a piece of chipped paint when they ask you to talk about yourself.

You say you don’t want to.

They look down at their notebook and you can only see them out of the corner of your eye. The paint chip is no bigger than the size of your thumb nail, but if you stare at it hard enough you swear it starts to grow. They try again.

They ask you to describe how you feel with colors.

You stare at the paint chip harder. The spot gets wider.

You say you feel like white, like color without color.

They ask you to go deeper and you shake your head. You don’t want to talk about yourself.

They ask about work and you say white. They ask about your family and you say white again. They ask about your friends and you say they feel like beige, that there’s some color there but if you focus on it hard enough it seems like white.

A moment of silence passes between the two of you. You’re still focusing on the paint chip.

They ask about your significant other and your vision blurs.

Immediately it’s a sea of color behind your eyes – red for the time his teeth split your bottom lip the first time you kiss and it left smears of your blood on his lips, blue for the time you went to a local festival and shared cotton candy that turned his teeth and tongue a lovely shade of sky.

There’s green for the way your favorite shirt hangs off him in the moonlight, and there’s gold for the way his eyes shine when they spot you in a crowd.

There are so many colors for him.

You tell the counselor that he feels like orange. He feels like waking up in the morning.

He feels like home. He feels like _it’s fine_.

 

 

You’re twenty-one and you’re moving into an apartment with Mario.

You spend your first day trying to furnish the living room, him the bedroom, and eventually you give up waiting until the rooms were finished like the two of you had promised.

He’s standing on top of the unmade bed trying to turn the ceiling fan on, his hair flayed from the heat and sticking to the sides of his face.

You join him on top of the bed, turning on the fan before putting your hands on his hips.

He says you cheated and you kiss one of the bones in his spine. You feel the gold shiver off him.

The world blurs as you lower him onto the bare mattress and slide your hands underneath his cotton briefs. His breath is purple against your neck.

Your name is like a hallelujah from his lips, a prayer he says over and over again against the side of your face. He’s hot in your hands when he cums.

You count the seconds you’ve been with him. One, two, three. One, two, three.

94593765 seconds have passed.

For a while you forget the world is void of color.

 

 

You’re twenty-two and you start to feel the echoes again.

You tell him you love him for the first time and there are tears collecting in the corners of your eyes.

He kisses your forehead and holds your face in his hands.

 

 

You’re twenty-three and the colors have become muted once again.

You tell him you love him again and again and again.

Again and again.

And again.

You don’t know how to tell him the colors have started to fade. ( _I love you, Mario._ )

( _I love you too, Marco._ )

You ask him to say it again and he does. You ask him to hold you and he does.

You ask him to help you and he asks how.

You tell him you don’t know.

 

 

You’re twenty-four when he finally leaves you.

 _Help yourself_ , he says. You can hear the pleading in it.

You don’t know how. You feel yourself grasping at the frying strands of your life with him. Red burns your eyes now, it seers your blood and turns it cold. Blue leaves you gasping for air. Green makes you claw at your own neck and pull at your hair. Gold is what breaks you the most.

Gold is everything that he is, and was, and will ever be.

 

 

You’re twenty-five years old standing on a bridge. The water is wine dark and it’s been seventeen days since your birthday.

The world isn’t as muted as it used to be. It fades in and out – there are days when the world is too bright and you feel you have to shield your eyes away so you don’t blind yourself, and there are days when it is so dark you can barely see. You squint trying to put color back into it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

You still keep his picture in your pocket.

You’re not angry at him. You don’t blame him. You just _miss_ him.

You miss the feel of the colors in your eyes, mouth, and hands. You miss the way he turns nothing into something, and something into everything. You miss the way his eyes crinkle when you hide your face in his neck when the sun was too bright while you lay in bed together – you miss the way he touches the fine hairs on the back of your neck when you aren’t doing well.

You miss the way he let color bleed onto an otherwise white canvas.

You kick stones off the edge of the bridge and watch them fall, hovering over the edge with one hand around the iron bars.

The June winds blow around your hair and you fight to keep blonde strands from poking you in the eye. You’re not gasping anymore. You’re not drowning in nothing anymore.

But you are sad.

And it is a terrible shade of yellow.

Your fingers wrap around the iron bar harder turning your knuckles as white as the world used to be and you take in a deep breath. One, two, three seconds pass. It’s quiet around you.

You tilt your head back and scream.

You hear a yelp and turn around quickly. You aren’t a pleading man, but maybe you could be once.

He’s standing there in green looking at you with gold in his eyes. Your eyes burn.

He meets you before you meet him, his hands grabbing the black material of your jacket and his face is in your neck. Life, bleary, washed out comes back into focus. He tells you he’s sorry and you kiss the top of his head. His perfume is still the same, his aftershave and shampoo as well.

 _It’s not your fault_ , you tell him. _I’m not mad._

He clutches you harder and you cry out as the wind whistles past you again.

He’s the only color you’ve ever wanted.

 _I love you, Mario_. There’s a lump in your throat.

_I love you, Marco._

**Author's Note:**

> i'm terrible at actually focusing on my job while i'm at work, but because i'm allowed to listen to music while i work, one of my favorite songs (cold skin by To Kill a King, and also their song rays) came on my shuffle and it gave me ideas for this fic. chandelier by sia also played a part.
> 
> depression is hard. loving yourself is harder. and there's nothing wrong with someone helping you love yourself.
> 
> i wanted to try something from marco's POV (second person bc i'm weak and it's my favorite lately). i hope you enjoyed it. xo


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